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Addressing the world's most pressing environmental challenges.

The world faces unprecedented environmental challenges, from climate change, to pollution, to biodiversity loss and species extinction. These challenges have largely been caused by human activity, which since the industrial revolution has been the dominant influence on the environment. With the emergence of the Anthropocene as a geologically recognised epoch, human culture and social practices have become part of the ecosystem itself.

Meeting the challenges posed by the Anthropocene means that we must understand culture as integral to the physical systems of the planet. Representation, creation, figuration and imagination are not only the ways through which the environment features in art, literature, and human culture more broadly—they are factors in its physical and systematic production. Arts & Humanities also speaks crucially to the ethical and moral considerations that must underpin our societies’ response to environmental challenges.

Based in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, and working in collaboration with our PLuS Alliance partners, Arizona State University and the University of New South Wales, the Environmental Humanities Network is a collaboration of disciplines aimed at understanding these and other environmental issues.

Photo by NASA

People

Rowan Rose Boyson

Reader in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature

Jinhee Choi

Professor of Film Studies

Clara de Massol

Lecturer in Memory Studies

Chris Manias

Reader in the History of Science

Projects

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Anosmia in Culture and History: Smell Losses/Smell Lessons

A King’s Together-funded multidisciplinary project bringing together researchers from within King’s and beyond to create a unique dialogue around smell loss.

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Bees in the medieval world: economic, environmental and cultural perspectives

How cultural ideas of the bee - a potent religious symbol - drove expansive trade in wax and honey and impact on economy and environment.

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Cosmological Visionaries: Shamans, Scientists, and Climate Change at the Ethnic Borderlands of China and Russia

Funded by the European Research Council Synergy Grant scheme, Cosmological Visionaries explores what environmental initiatives of the future will look like.

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Economic and cultural connections within Mediterranean ecosystems, c.1250-1550

Looking at the environmental history of the Mediterranean, its economic activity and cultural exchange, shedding light on the long-term genesis and management.

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Forestscapes

Exploring generative arts-based methods for recomposing collections of sound to support collective inquiry into forests as living cultural landscapes.

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Popularizing Palaeontology: Current and Historical Perspectives

From the beginnings of research into earth’s deep history in the late-18th century, extinct animals, lost worlds, and accounts of palaeontological discovery.

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SUPERB: Upscaling Forest Restoration

A large and powerful multi-stakeholder network aimed at creating transformative change towards large-scale restoration, part of a major Horizon2020 programme.

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Underwater Lives: humans, species, oceans

Relations between humans, marine species and oceans over the last hundred years from an underwater perspective.

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Valuing Nature: Histories of everyday engagement with the environment in France, Britain, and their Empires, 1600-present

How has the natural world been valued, and how have different types of engagement with nature and environment been valued?

News

How pop-culture's love for dinosaurs has deepened our understanding of them

From Jurassic Park to Toy Story’s Rex, dinosaurs have always captured our imagination. Dr Chris Manias’ new book delves into the two-way relation between pop...

Palaeontology in Public

Listening to forests: new project explores soundscapes as method for ecological research

A new collaboration between the Departments of Geography and Digital Humanities explores how soundscapes can be used as a way to 'attend' to forest life.

Forestscapes

Environmental Humanities Network launched to address ‘planetary wellbeing'

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities has launched the Environmental Humanities Network aimed at ‘addressing the past and future of the Anthropocene'.

environmental-humanities-network-hero

Events

18Jun

Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction

Gary Younge & Sadiah Qureshi in Conversation

Please note: this event has passed.

21May

Literary Fieldwork: Archives, the Environment and Black American Fiction

Dr Randi Gill-Sadler will be giving a talk entitled “Literary Fieldwork: Archives, the Environment and Black American Fiction” followed by a conversation with...

Please note: this event has passed.

22Mar

Palaeontology in Public Launch

Palaeontology in Public: Popular Science, Lost Creatures and Deep Time, available as an open-access pdf.

Please note: this event has passed.

10Mar

Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

Join us to celebrate the publication of Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis by Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe.

Please note: this event has passed.

26Feb

Arks, Vaults, Pods: The Architectures of Climate Survival

From biobanks to cryonics, from frozen zoos to de-extinction programs, Antoine Traisnel explores the architectures of climate survival.

Please note: this event has passed.

People

Rowan Rose Boyson

Reader in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature

Jinhee Choi

Professor of Film Studies

Clara de Massol

Lecturer in Memory Studies

Chris Manias

Reader in the History of Science

Projects

Image missing an alt value
Anosmia in Culture and History: Smell Losses/Smell Lessons

A King’s Together-funded multidisciplinary project bringing together researchers from within King’s and beyond to create a unique dialogue around smell loss.

Image missing an alt value
Bees in the medieval world: economic, environmental and cultural perspectives

How cultural ideas of the bee - a potent religious symbol - drove expansive trade in wax and honey and impact on economy and environment.

Image missing an alt value
Cosmological Visionaries: Shamans, Scientists, and Climate Change at the Ethnic Borderlands of China and Russia

Funded by the European Research Council Synergy Grant scheme, Cosmological Visionaries explores what environmental initiatives of the future will look like.

Image missing an alt value
Economic and cultural connections within Mediterranean ecosystems, c.1250-1550

Looking at the environmental history of the Mediterranean, its economic activity and cultural exchange, shedding light on the long-term genesis and management.

Image missing an alt value
Forestscapes

Exploring generative arts-based methods for recomposing collections of sound to support collective inquiry into forests as living cultural landscapes.

Image missing an alt value
Popularizing Palaeontology: Current and Historical Perspectives

From the beginnings of research into earth’s deep history in the late-18th century, extinct animals, lost worlds, and accounts of palaeontological discovery.

Image missing an alt value
SUPERB: Upscaling Forest Restoration

A large and powerful multi-stakeholder network aimed at creating transformative change towards large-scale restoration, part of a major Horizon2020 programme.

Image missing an alt value
Underwater Lives: humans, species, oceans

Relations between humans, marine species and oceans over the last hundred years from an underwater perspective.

Image missing an alt value
Valuing Nature: Histories of everyday engagement with the environment in France, Britain, and their Empires, 1600-present

How has the natural world been valued, and how have different types of engagement with nature and environment been valued?

News

How pop-culture's love for dinosaurs has deepened our understanding of them

From Jurassic Park to Toy Story’s Rex, dinosaurs have always captured our imagination. Dr Chris Manias’ new book delves into the two-way relation between pop...

Palaeontology in Public

Listening to forests: new project explores soundscapes as method for ecological research

A new collaboration between the Departments of Geography and Digital Humanities explores how soundscapes can be used as a way to 'attend' to forest life.

Forestscapes

Environmental Humanities Network launched to address ‘planetary wellbeing'

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities has launched the Environmental Humanities Network aimed at ‘addressing the past and future of the Anthropocene'.

environmental-humanities-network-hero

Events

18Jun

Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction

Gary Younge & Sadiah Qureshi in Conversation

Please note: this event has passed.

21May

Literary Fieldwork: Archives, the Environment and Black American Fiction

Dr Randi Gill-Sadler will be giving a talk entitled “Literary Fieldwork: Archives, the Environment and Black American Fiction” followed by a conversation with...

Please note: this event has passed.

22Mar

Palaeontology in Public Launch

Palaeontology in Public: Popular Science, Lost Creatures and Deep Time, available as an open-access pdf.

Please note: this event has passed.

10Mar

Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

Join us to celebrate the publication of Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis by Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe.

Please note: this event has passed.

26Feb

Arks, Vaults, Pods: The Architectures of Climate Survival

From biobanks to cryonics, from frozen zoos to de-extinction programs, Antoine Traisnel explores the architectures of climate survival.

Please note: this event has passed.

Group leads